Moral Reform and the Anti-Abortion Movement

Abstract

Throughout the 1970s protest against abortion was organised by two main pressure groups, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child and the LIFE organisation. This paper considers the rhetoric employed by the anti-abortion movement during this period by focusing on the campaign literature, the evidence submitted to various committees of inquiry and public statements made by leading anti-abortionists. The findings from a study of a small sample of anti-abortion protestors are also reported. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by sixty-four members of two local branches of the two national pressure groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with local campaign activists. In the subsequent analysis the anti-abortion movement is depicted as adopting a position of cultural fundamentalism in the face of changing social mores and moral values. Protest against abortion is placed within the wider framework of moral reform. In studying the movement and its supporters use is made of the analytical distinction between assimilative and coercive reform (Gusfield, 1963).